Truth is the beginning of wisdom…

Quotes To Ponder

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse [money, bounty, assistance, gifts] from the public treasury.
- Alexis de Tocqueville

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
- Alexander Frazer Tytler

The revelations have been nothing short of jaw dropping. Dozens – yes dozens – of claims made in the IPCC 2007 report on climate change that was supposed to represent the “consensus” of 2500 of the world’s climate scientists have been shown to be bogus, or faulty, or not properly vetted, or simply pulled out of thin air.

We know this because newspapers in Great Britain are doing their job; vetting the 2007 report item by item, coming up with shocking news about global warming claims that formed the basis of argument by climate change advocates who were pressuring the US and western industrialized democracies to transfer trillions of dollars in wealth to the third world and cede sovereignty to the UN.

Glaciergate, tempgate, icegate, and now, disappearing Amazon forests not the result of warming, but of logging. And the report the IPCC based their bogus “science” on was written by a food safety advocate according to this Christopher Booker piece in the Telegraph :

Dr North next uncovered “Amazongate”. The IPCC made a prominent claim in its 2007 report, again citing the WWF as its authority, that climate change could endanger “up to 40 per cent” of the Amazon rainforest – as iconic to warmists as those Himalayan glaciers and polar bears. This WWF report, it turned out, was co-authored by Andy Rowell, an anti-smoking and food safety campaigner who has worked for WWF and Greenpeace, and contributed pieces to Britain’s two most committed environmentalist newspapers. Rowell and his co-author claimed their findings were based on an article in Nature. But the focus of that piece, it emerges, was not global warming at all but the effects of logging.

A Canadian analyst has identified more than 20 passages in the IPCC’s report which cite similarly non-peer-reviewed WWF or Greenpeace reports as their authority, and other researchers have been uncovering a host of similarly dubious claims and attributions all through the report. These range from groundless allegations about the increased frequency of “extreme weather events” such as hurricanes, droughts and heatwaves, to a headline claim that global warming would put billions of people at the mercy of water shortages – when the study cited as its authority indicated exactly the opposite, that rising temperatures could increase the supply of water.

This is a great story. It has everything a media outlet could desire; scandal, conflict of interest (IPCC head Pauchuri runs companies that benefited from climate scare stories), government cover ups – why then, has this unraveling of the basis of climate science that posited catastrophic man made warming not been making any news at all in the United States?

It’s too easy to simply claim “bias.” Media outlets don’t pass up juicy stories that could potentially increase their readership and revenue for ideological purposes (except the New York Times – and even they could spin all of this to show skeptics to be using flawed arguments like the liberal Guardian is doing in England).

Perhaps it’s time to ask why this story being revealed overseas with new revelations almost daily in the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Timesonline, and other Fleet Street publications can’t get any traction here. Blogs like Watts up with That and Climate Depot are keeping us informed of the latest from England but we hear crickets chirping when it comes to stories from major newspapers and – outside of Fox News – the cable nets.

As global warming the political movement is losing its scientific justification, the American people – who will be asked to foot the bill to the tune of trillions of dollars if Obama goes ahead with his “green” plans – are grossly uninformed about the state of the debate. Until the media starts to give this story the coverage it deserves, that state of affairs will not change.

The hitch is that the man-caused catastrophic global warming theory is dead, and it needs to be buried. Evidence had been mounting for years that there were problems with the global warming model; most telling was that the globe refused to warm up. Carbon emissions continued apace, but the world began cooling. This is why true believers abandoned the “global warming” brand name and tried to shift the debate to the more ambiguous label “climate change,” which is something the rest of us like to refer to as “weather.”

The dam broke with Climategate when hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that global warming advocates had for years attempted to hide conflicting data and silence their professional critics. British authorities have determined that the university broke freedom-of-information laws by denying information to scientists seeking to check claims that global warming was caused by human activity.

Evidence is emerging that the data had been rigged all along. Russian analysts noted that British temperature calculations excluded data from 40% of Russian territory, much of which showed no increase in temperature in the past 50 years. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also cherry-picked data, cutting Canadian data sources from 600 to 35 and relying on only one monitor for all of Canada above the Arctic Circle. This was done even though Canada operates 1,400 weather stations, 100 of which are in the Arctic.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is having its own scandal regarding a finding in its Nobel Peace Prize-winning 2007 report that glaciers in India were rapidly disappearing. It is now revealed that this dramatic claim was based not on years of patient observation and research but anecdotes from a hiking magazine and a student’s master’s thesis. IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri knew about the erroneous information before December’s Copenhagen climate summit but maintained the falsehood. He even denounced a report from India that showed the glaciers were in far less jeopardy as “unsubstantiated research.”

Climate scientists have to come to grips with some highly inconvenient truths. World temperatures continue to decline as carbon emissions increase. Chilly Scotland is facing its coldest winter in a century. Arctic sea ice is not vanishing. Polar bears are experiencing a baby boom. Water vapor appears to play as important a role in the climate as carbon emissions. Sunspot activity may be more important than both combined. Meanwhile, climate change fanatics seek to blame capitalism and productivity for global warming, global cooling, too much snow, not enough snow, hurricanes, tornadoes and even the Haiti earthquake.

The increasingly discredited theory of carbon-based, man-caused global warming needs to be discarded, and the scientists who sought to squelch skeptics and artificially inflate their own reputations must be disciplined. This deception needs to cease as does the teaching and indoctrination of it in schools, universities, and society. Too many lies are being taught by ideologues without proof.

Yes, we need to be good stewards of the earth but not worship it. Natural resources were given to humankind to utilize and manage for their benefit. The more efficiently this is accomplished, and wisdom we use in that accomplishment, the better it will be. There is always room for more technologies that will help this happen.

When the “Green Police” commercial came on during the Super Bowl, I was at first distracted. As the commercial wore on, however, it seems the commercial is an attempt at humor from Audi, which can be taken one of two ways.

Way #1: Audi is as fed up as most of us with the legalistic approach of government-worshippers who want to enforce responsible behavior through the power of the state. In a good stab at such misguided beliefs, Audi basically tried to sell an awesome car to people fed up with getting in trouble with the viciously politically correct. I am okay with this view, though the imagery was still very scary.

Way #2: Audi agreed with the stance that would require governmentally enforced global eco-wackoism and thought it was funny to poke fun at people who don’t share the extreme “granola” viewpoint.

Obviously, the commercial was so controversial because it rang close to the truth. Many of us share the viewpoint that ecological hysteria is being used to increase statist’s power at the expense of individual freedom. Just like wars, if a government can get people freaked out enough (i.e. the world is coming to an end, we will be nuked in five minutes, the earth is going to overheat, the polar ice-caps are melting, global warming, and now, the ever-flexible “climate change”-allowing people to freak out when temperatures trend in either direction) then they can justify taking emergency, draconian measures to enforce their “protection.” It used to be that this protection was from enemies in war. Now the protection is against ourselves and neighbors who dare to flush their toilets a bit too often.

This is tragic.

Why? … because the loss of individual freedom will kill everything else. The parasite in totalitarian government always ends up killing its host (usually millions at a time).

But there is another tragedy, too. It is the tragedy that will certainly befall our environment if the extremists succeed in giving something like the Green Police the power the commercial showed us. What some don’t seem to understand is that totalitarian, tyrannical, communistic, socialistic governments have a very consistent track record of being the worst polluters.

For those of us who truly enjoy nature and care about passing a clean, well-cared-for planet on to our grandchildren, and who also realize that the private sector is more effective at administering nearly anything when compared to pervasive governments, the issue is a hot one. There is no way a statist power of even the most invasive kind can effectively control the behavior of 6 billion people. It is up to individual responsibility and stewardship. This has always been accomplished best through community activism, social norms, private enterprise, proper incentives aligned to reinforce the correct behavior, and the like. None of these are perfect, and we have a long way to go, (if only all the effort toward empowering government toward this end were being used to empower the private sector) but, rest assured, they will far surpass the efforts of any government to make a difference, and, they come with the additional benefit of individual freedom instead of its opposite.

Government is like a sledge hammer. It is only good at one thing, and the use of a sledgehammer is obvious. However, when you are a sledgehammer, every problem tends to look like a cinder block in need of smashing. A sledgehammer can be used to cut a board in half, but it will do a messy and destructive job of it. (Don’t even get me started on how the sledgehammer works on the economy!) The board may eventually be pulverized into two pieces, but not as effectively as it would have had the correct tool been used.

The question isn’t whether or not we should be responsible stewards of planet earth. Of course we should. The question is rather which tool is most appropriate to bring about the most effective results. History is clear that individual initiative and the private sector properly incentivized are consistently far superior to the government sledgehammer. The people who don’t believe this don’t read history, I guess, or haven’t traveled enough to third world countries. Or maybe, just maybe, they simply want the power and prestige governmental decree in service to a worthy political correctness can bring.

Global Warming and CO2? Where’s the real evidence?

It was kind of a cool summer, wouldn’t you say? And those folks enjoying the early snows out west this fall, well, they might actually be praying for a little global warming.

Taking care of the earth is important but global warming is not a scientific fact. The new movie Not Evil Just Wrong makes that clear. But that’s not stopping leaders in wealthy Western nations from pushing radical “solutions” to this dubious problem.

Not Evil Just Wrong does a great job of clearing the air over some contentious issues. Take the hysteria over CO2 emissions, for example. It’s an odorless gas that every living being gives off when he or she exhales. As Patrick Moore, once a founder of Greenpeace, says in the film, “Anybody who knows anything about biology knows that carbon dioxide is the most important nutrient of all of life. It is the currency of life.”

Therefore, as MIT’s Richard Lindzen says, we must distinguish between pollutants and CO2. He says, “When you see smokestacks in this country, it is very rare that you see black soot. We have tons of environmental regulations designed to control real pollutants.” CO2 is not a pollutant and has been regulated as hazardous only for the governments agenda grab for taxes and power.

Notice that he says “in this country.” Global warming activists would be happy to slap moratoriums on the building of coal burning plants here in the U.S. Even better, they would like to see existing plants eliminated. This would crush American industry – maybe 7 million American jobs are associated with coal alone.

And, ironically, it would boost industry and production in China and India, were there are virtually no environmental regulations, and where they use “dirtier” coal than we do in the United States! The unintended consequence, of course, is that by shutting down coal and coal-based industries here, we end up increasing global air pollution, which comes from dirtier plants overseas.

The film also questions another global warming proposition – that is, that even slight rises in global temperatures would be catastrophic. Well, it would be catastrophic if you consider increased global food production and human flourishing a bad thing. Europe, for example, thrived during the Medieval warm period. In the latter Middle Ages, when temperatures dropped dramatically, crops failed, malnutrition and disease was rampant – millions perished, and the human “herd” was culled, if you want to put it that way.

Which raises another issue addressed in the film. The proposed “solutions” to global warming are, in many ways, profoundly anti-human. The wealthy can afford expensive power. The poor and working poor cannot. Patrick Moore says, “The idea that Al Gore has proposed that we can stop using fossil fuels in 10 years is completely reckless … 85% of global energy is fossil fuel today, and we depend on it for our survival.”

Lord Lawson, a member of the economics committee of Britain’s House of Lords, puts it plainly: “The people who are calling for massive carbon dioxide reductions are the enemies of poverty reduction in the developing world.”

I urge you to see the film Not Evil Just Wrong, being distributed by the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. You can get a copy for yourself, your friends – or maybe even for your congressman.

The left really does plan to outlaw your private insurance … just read the bill. Something that many Members of Congress haven’t done … not just this bill.

The legislation in question is H.R. 3200 (America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 or AAHCA) which was formally introduced by John Dingell, a leading Democrat in Congress.

Here is some of the actual language:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.”

You read that right. If you are not insured on day one of the effective date of this legislation you are involuntarily forced into the government plan.

If you are not insured on day one of the effective date of this legislation you are involuntarily forced into the government plan.

But there’s more. If you ever have to change insurance (i.e. you switch jobs), you won’t be able to obtain private insurance … that you will be involuntarily forced into a government plan.

If you ever have to change insurance (i.e. you switch jobs), you won’t be able to obtain private insurance … that you will be involuntarily forced into a government plan.

Think about it … how many people switch jobs at least once in their lives?

Answer: Everybody

“The Commissioner shall establish a grace period whereby, for plan years beginning after the end of the 5-year period beginning with Y1, an employment-based health plan in operation as of the day before the first day of Y1 must meet the same requirements as apply to a qualified health benefits plan under section 101, including the essential benefit package requirement under section 121.”

No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. Those who are ‘grandfathered’ and allowed to keep their private coverage … those who are fortunate enough not to have the need to switch carriers or plans are going to be left out in the cold anyway because the private carriers will be forced to dance to the government’s tune.

Does this sound like a repeat of what Barack Hussein Obama and the Pelosi liberals in Congress did to the housing industry and General Motors?

There’s no doubt; Barack Hussein Obama is rushing to totally socialize America’s healthcare system before the end of summer.

No time to read the bills …. No time to study the effects … No time to consider the costly deficits for as far as the eye can see …. Just demands to pass it now ….

That is why Barack Obama used his weekly radio address to declare that “healthcare reform cannot wait.” Barack Hussein Obama is pressuring your Congressman and Senators.

Barack Obama has repeatedly lied about his healthcare reform plans.

Lie #1, Obama says: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

But according to Robert M. Goldberg, vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, writing in the American Spectator: “Now you might be wondering, how the government plan recruits doctors and providers to this exciting new enterprise? Actually, it forces any provider getting paid by Medicare to join the plan. Do doctors have a ‘choice’? Of course. They can ‘opt out in a process established by the Secretary.’ Translation: No public option patients, no Medicare patients.”

So keeping your doctor will depend on lots of factors, but don’t hold your breath.

Lie #2, Obama Says: “I will not sign on to any health plan that adds to our deficits over the next decade.”

But according to the Congressional Budget Office’s current chief, Douglas Elmendorf, Obamacare will lead to substantially higher costs in the future – costs that will be “unsustainable.”

Other expert estimates for reforming health care range from 1 trillion to 3.6 trillion. Much of this money will be spent on subsidies to the so-called “public” option that would lead to higher rates on the private plans most of us have now.

Lie #3, Obama Says: “They change incentives so providers will give patients the best care, not just the most expensive care, which will mean big savings over time.”

But according to Robert M Goldberg again: “In fact, both bills cover the cost by making people wait for needed tests and treatments and forcing doctors to skimp on care to meet a government standard of ‘quality.’ AAHCA uses price controls. And there is no room for discussion: The bill states: ‘There shall be no administrative or judicial review of a payment rate or methodology established under this section or any other section.'”

Don’t let Obama continue to lie to the American people. This plan will hurt your health care.

It is frightening that Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi are rushing the overhaul of the entire system without adequate debate and deliberation. Pelosi is disregarding the deliberative process. When questioned about the way the House of Representatives leader has repeatedly railroaded over Republican objections, she simple says: “Now, we had an election that was about our different views and the direction our country was going in. We had a different point of view. The American people agreed with us.”

Barack Obama also wants to do away with committee hearings, expert testimony, study and discussion. At a hastily called news conference, Obama was frantically pushing the bill: Obama continued, “now is the not the time to slow down.”“We are going to get this done. We will reform health care. It will happen this year. I’m absolutely convinced of that.”

This gestapo of leftists that are currently in control of America are blocking the torpedoes and pushing ahead because they don’t want key questions asked … questions that deserve answers.

Stand and demand that Members of Congress do the right thing.

The goal is clear. This is the next step before a complete takeover of the American private medical system. Socialized medicine will lead to limits on care, limits on tests, and limits on doctors, leading to premature death for you or your loved ones.

Look what socialized medicine has done to the healthcare industry in other countries around the world, according to Investor’s Business Daily it is a story of care deferred and higher death rates:

“In countries with nationalized care, medical outcomes are often catastrophically worse. Take breast cancer. According to the Heritage Foundation, breast cancer mortality in Germany is 52% higher than in the U.S.; the U.K.’s rate is 88% higher. For prostate cancer, mortality is 604% higher in the U.K. and 457% higher in Norway. Colorectal cancer? 40% higher in the U.K.”

But what about the health care paradise to our north? Americans have almost uniformly better outcomes and lower mortality rates than Canada, where breast cancer mortality is 9% higher, prostate cancer 184% higher and colon cancer 10% higher.

Then there are the waiting lists. In Canada, which has a population of just over 33 million, just under that of California, 830,000 Canadians are waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment. In England, the list is 1.8 million deep.

Rationed care that increases deaths is not my idea of improvement, and I know you don’t think so either.

When Barack Obama launched his presidency, he pledged to “build a more hopeful America.” On the campaign trail he promised to do away with Washington politics as usual.

But in the first six months of his term, Obama has indulged in a breath-taking campaign of nepotism, self-dealing, back-scratching, corporate lobbying, government favors, entrenched incumbency, and hypocrisy.

Obama’s government is not exactly the change people were hoping for.

In her devastating exposé, Culture of Corruption, bestselling author and investigative reporter Michelle Malkin cites example after example of Team Obama’s corrupt dealings and abuses of power. Malkin shows how Obama has hand-picked a team that will do his dirty work for him and exposes dozens of corrupt dealings—all of which the liberal media would rather keep hidden.

From power broker Rahm Emanuel, to pay-to-play tainted Michelle Obama and Joe Biden, to ethically challenged Tim Geithner, to crime-coddling corporate lawyer Eric Holder, Obama’s cabinet is all about increased government power and very little about helping Americans get ahead.

How the Obama White House has circumvented the pesky approval process by simply appointing unaccountable, unqualified, scandal-ridden “czars” to key posts—16 and counting

How Obama asserted he “never organized with ACORN,” but Federal Election Commission records show he paid more than $832,000 to CSI “ACORN’s Campaign Services Entity” and then lied about it

How Obama promises low-cost healthcare for everyone, yet his wife, First Crony-In-Chief, championed a University of Chicago healthcare program that was accused of “patient dumping” and “cherry picking” wealthy patients over poor

Culture of Corruption proves that this is the government of the crony, by the lobbyist, and for the well-heeled. Obama lacks the will to change Washington politics, and Culture of Corruption reveals what his agenda will mean for his presidency—and America.

An authoritative new book draws on thousands of peer-reviewed research papers and books, plus additional scientific research, as it challenges popular concerns that global warming is either man-made or would have harmful effects.

“We see no evidence whatsoever for the claim that the warming of the last 50 years is due to human activities,” co-author Dr. S. Fred Singer said in presenting the report. “On the contrary … we see evidence against man-made global warming.”

Singer and Dr. Craig Idso, as well as 35 contributors and reviewers, offer an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress have relied for regulatory proposals, including the energy tax known as “Cap and Trade.”

“This is really not about science,” Singer said. “What is really going on – not only in Washington, but in Europe and elsewhere – is money and power. That is what it’s all about.”

Planet Earth is actually in a cooling cycle … except around Washington where the hot air of a fake crises so Gore and his “the sky is falling” cronies who stand to make huge profits are heating up the rhetoric. All this, of course, on the backs of Americans in the form of MORE TAXES after the many promises of “no new taxes” from Obama.

In the last week of June, the House of Representatives passed a bill intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 17% by 2020 and 83% by 2050.

The politics of what used to be called “global warming,” and now labeled “climate change,” isn’t limited to Capitol Hill. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal tells us, at the same time that the House was debating its bill, other countries were having second thoughts about their already enacted measures.

The Polish Academy of Sciences, for one, has publicly challenged the science behind man-made global warming. And only 11% of Czech citizens believe that human activity contributes to the measured rise in temperatures. Even New Zealand, rightly regarded as an ecological wonderland, suspended its emissions-reduction program.

Then there’s Australia. Earlier this year, the government submitted its proposal to limit CO2 emissions. Given the potential costs and the prospect of, as some Australian commentators put it, “carbon cops” knocking on people’s doors, Australian senator Steve Fielding asked the obvious question: Is this necessary?

Fielding, an engineer, was concerned that the government had accepted “one scientific explanation for climate change at face value” without looking at all the data … the scientific data and scientists that didn’t agree with what has been stated. Just like our EPA and government has done.

So he examined the science himself, including asking the Obama administration to address his concerns about the science. While the administration didn’t respond to his request, what Fielding learned persuaded him not to support the proposal. He realized that those in the EPA and others would risk job losses for not following the party line.

And Fielding is far from alone. As the Journal put it, “The number of [global warming] skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling.”

Even if some of the “green science” were convincing, there are good reasons to be skeptical about the approach being debated in Congress. Columnist David Brooks spoke for many when he called the bill “a morass of corporate giveaways.” No one knows what effect it will have on CO2 emissions. A similar European effort failed and actually was followed by a rise in emissions.

Then there’s the elephant in the room: China. China is building two coal-fired power plants every week. It’s estimated that, within 20 years, China’s CO2 emissions will be equal to the entire world’s today. Other developing countries are following China’s lead. Even the European Union is increasing its use of coal.

As any one of these alone would overwhelm American reductions, together they make the House vote seem almost perverse. A massive transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans to favored industries in furtherance of a policy that won’t work in response to a “crisis” whose scientific basis is far from proven. What am I missing here?

Would-be technocrats whose goal is to manage and shape our society are working hand in hand with those who would profit from their efforts. They insist that the global warming debate is “over” and compare those who disagree, or even ask questions, to Holocaust deniers.

Outrageous? Sure. Surprising? Not really look who is in office. What do they do when their argument is unconvincing … they take away more of your freedoms … because they have the power to do so!

A European filmmaker is warning the U.S. about the disastrous cost of cap and trade.

The U.S. House last week passed the Waxman-Markey Energy Bill, otherwise known as “cap and trade.” This legislation seeks to limit the emission of carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide that the EPA is trying to control but alas have a scandal in that area as they try to hide conflicting reports so that only the Democrat politically approved version gets through.

Opponents of the measure argued that implementation of cap and trade would destroy the American economy and dramatically increase energy costs for the average American – something then-presidential candidate Barack Obama stated clearly while on the campaign trail in late 2008.

“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket…regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad – because I’m capping green house gases..,.” Obama said.This, is good for the economy, people and jobs?

Documentary film producer and director Ann McElhinney is perplexed at the recent passage of cap and trade. Her latest film, Not Evil Just Wrong, takes an in-depth look at how environmental policy can do more harm than good. She sees some irony in the effect of the Kyoto Protocol – an international environmental treaty the U.S. has symbolically signed but never ratified.

“Countries in Europe that signed up to Kyoto, which is our equivalent of this cap and trade, …have seen a loss in jobs – and funny enough they’ve lost jobs to America,” she observes, “because they can’t compete, because it immediately affects how much electricity costs to people.”So now we are going to push jobs away?

And utility costs, she contends, are a particularly sensitive issue to people. “It’s sensitive to people on low incomes, but it’s a very sensitive issue for industries that are trying to make a profit and that can only succeed in a very competitive world, that can only succeed if they can keep their energy prices low,” McElhinney explains. “So for Europe, [cap and trade] has been a total disaster.”